Barcelona in Fall
by Sarah Rose Serena
Summary: It's not easy being an orphan. It's not easy forgiving God for his creations, for his cruelty, when an angel ruins everything you have. Especially when that same angel comes back six years too late and has no idea how to make amends. [Coda to 10x09 "The Things We Left Behind"] Castiel/Claire, Mentions of Meg.


**Barcelona in Fall**

[a _Supernatural_ story]

**_"Forgive me, Father. For I am Sin. I aim to wage war against my God."_**

* * *

><p>She wakes herself up in the shower, shakes off the shock with a cascade of scalding water, not scrubbing at the crusted blood and guts and grime caking her skin but just standing dazed, head hung, eyes shut, lips parted, letting it stream. Her overextended muscles ache and the wet pound of the showerhead hurts so good. Hurts like relief.<p>

Some part of her knew he'd come, but she's still surprised as hell.

There is a piercing kind of agony in her head, rattling around the inside of her skull, a sting in her skin, under her fingernails, rubbed raw. She has no business being in the middle of a hunt at sixteen and abandoned, being battered to the ground by a beast, its teeth rending her flesh, but maybe that is the only place she has business being. Maybe this is where she belongs now, where she has been found, spent so long just lost. Either way, here she is, and just this once, she's not running. Maybe it's masochism, maybe it's hope, but mostly she thinks it's just about not giving a damn. The blood, the pain, the adrenaline, these men and monsters keeping her company because they haven't bothered to send her away yet, this is not a good way to live, but it is a way. Less boring than a group home, less lonely than the streets, more freedom than a kid like her has been afforded in forever. The kind of kid nobody wants. She's here, and this is where she'll stay, least until something better comes her way.

Oh, who the fuck is she kidding? Nothing better ever comes.

Feeling the water sluice down her back, one palm flat to the cold smooth tile of the wall, blood and dirt and heat pooling at her feet, she slides a hand down her stomach, wincing at the throb of bruises flowering her ribcage. The hand keeps going, down, down, down, past the hurt, into the sore, fingers finding a warm neglected bundle of nerves. She's wet with water but not desire and the dryness chafes, constricts, more things on her body rubbed raw, but she keeps at it and pushes beyond the discomfort. Stimulates herself forcibly out of the defeated numbness. Into something mildly agreeable. Forehead falling to rest against the tile, she shudders loose a breath and jets slip down her face, running over her split parted lips, catching on her tongue. Her knees are weak and wobble, legs so tired she's barely standing, but she refuses to collapse. She'll fall into her borrowed bed soon, still wet, and let the blackness consume her, but for right this moment, all she wants is release. Something better, anything at all, even if it sucks because it's hollow. She's determined, so she lets her legs shake and the muscles in her back quiver but she doesn't slide down, calloused pads pressing in until the nerves awake and begin to vibrate, humming through her limbs like quiet firecrackers, unraveling the tense pain into melted wax, into the relief of exhausted pleasure.

Her dad was a good man. He was a good man to a fault. He had faith. He wasn't a bible thumping zealot, but he was devout, and because of that so was she. Church every Sunday, giving thanks for every meal, prayers before bed every night. Her dad was a good man and a kind man and he loved her absolutely, so she trusted him absolutely, believing him when he told her to be a good girl, to worship the good Lord, because God was good and she could put her faith in that.

One of the million things James Novak was wrong about.

* * *

><p>He hears her moaning from the next room, hears the panting and the creaking of the bed when he walks by her bedroom, his feet faltering on the hardwood halfway down the dark hall. He's been around humans enough to know a lot of things by now, but this one is new. Not new, of course, but something he doesn't expect. It's not his first thought when he hears the sounds she's making. He's baffled, faintly concerned, so he reaches for the doorknob. Twists it. And in the gap he creates, he sees shadows and moonlight. Sees contours of her young bloomed body arching taut off the mattress, shoulder blades digging into the pillow, knees bent, one of her small volatile hands gone beneath the covers, between her legs, eyes shut and mouth open, expression on her jaded face soft and unguarded like he's never seen it before. Swirled up in simple thoughtless ecstasy.<p>

For a moment, only a moment, the angel cocks his head, watching the motions she makes and the heave of her body with each breath, studies the look of her pretty face very intently because there is something so enthralling there. _Captivating_. He likes her without the sneer, without the disdain, without all those cutting jagged glass edges.

When he realizes what she is doing exactly, and that it is most likely inappropriate to watch, he sucks up a sharp intake of air. He pulls back fast, shutting the door, letting go of the knob as if it's burned him. Stiltedly, confusedly, he rotates around and shuffles back down the hallway, back down the stairs, all the way out the front door. He feels he should probably give the child her privacy. He's not sure what precise distance is required.

* * *

><p>She's always wanted to see Spain. For awhile, at fourteen, her world revolved around jaded dark Gothic things, drugs and sex and Old World underground. Then it was Prague. She thought about selling herself, cashing in a big lump sum by doing something trite and childish and cocky like auctioning off her virginity, getting herself there with plane tickets and taxi fair and renting some hovel apartment overlooking the Vltava River. But that was a fourteen-year-old thought. Silly, ridiculous, implausible. It reeked of a type of desperation she wanted no part of. Before it had been Prague, and afterwards too, she always dreamed of Spain.<p>

The gold sun and the warm sand, walking along the Mediterranean. Vineyards and ancient stone palazzos, city lights and country hills, narrow cobblestone backstreets littered with café tables and dozens of street urchins like her, only they aren't starving, aren't freezing in winter, but relaxed and hedonistic, drinking wine and savoring pastries. That's the dream of it anyway. Reality hardly ever lives up, or even vaguely resembles what it claimed to be, but she's had this image in her mind since she was five. See, Jimmy Novak always wanted to see Spain. He had an idea of running a bistro on the corner of a quaint European street in romantic Barcelona. In his yearning plans, they would make fresh baked bread in the early morning dim light, enjoy warm lazy afternoons making chocolates, living a good life as a family in the restored apartments above the shop. He dreamed, and he told his daughter his plans like bedtime stories, and she hung a map of Spain up on her bedroom wall, putting pins in all the places they would visit, sketching portraits of the exact building on the exact street where they would live.

It's like ash on her tongue, that idea, that dream in her head, but all sorts of ugly monsters exist out there, so why not a phoenix to resurrect her happiness?

* * *

><p>"This is a bad idea. Horrible, horrible, horrible idea. That girl is trouble."<p>

Everybody knows it, everybody thinks it, but only Dean Winchester has the balls to say so, out loud, right in front of her. She crosses her arms and cocks her hip and tries to look bored, directing derisive deadpan his way, even though he's definitely right.

"Cas, you're not a parent. You're not even human. You wouldn't know the first thing about taking care of this kid. Send her back to the group home where she belongs."

"Whoa," she cuts in, holding up a finger with chipped black nail polish. "With you or without you losers, I'm not going back to that hellhole. You can give me a place to crash or not, I really don't care, but you're not shipping me off anywhere. I go where _I_ go."

Like she's proven his point, Dean cranes his head back to the conflicted angel. "See what I mean by trouble?"

The more temperate brother Sam adds, "It's not safe around us. We'd be constantly putting her in danger."

"You're right," the angel says suddenly, resolve firming his expression. "You'd endanger her. But she _will_ be safe around _me_. I will keep her safe. I owe her this."

"I don't need your pity," she snaps, semi perpetual sneer returning.

The men ignore her. Dean even holds up a hand in her face, saying impatiently, "Pipe down, jailbait. The grownups are talking."

Her clear blue eyes roll, darkened around the edges by black shadow and smoke, and her finger comes up to flip him the bird as she spins away, walking off. She's got better things to do than to listen to them bicker like little bitches. She never asked for his charity anyway.

But before she's gone, she hears the angel sternly declare, "The girl stays with me. This is not up for debate." And despite her ire, despite _everything_, she feels relief unfurl.

* * *

><p>She doesn't shower every morning, only when she feels icky, when she feels mistreated or claustrophobic and needs the droning sound of the spray to muffle her sobs, needs it to make her feel like she's alone, safe, and no one is listening. Her own little world, underneath the heat, underneath the water, finally coming clean.<p>

When she goes downstairs, a raggedy old Ramones shirt and pale blue boxer shorts damp and pressed in places to her flesh, towel rustling absently in her long wet strands, she pauses at the bottom of the stairs, bare toes against the cool oak floorboards. He's in the kitchen trying to figure out how to turn on the stove. The countertops are a mess. He can't cook. He'd starve to death if he needed to eat like humans do, to eat to survive, and she refuses to be amused by this fact, refuses to think that sickeningly endeared thought that pops into her brain when she sees him there looking clueless and adorable in the warm summer sunlight.

_How did he ever make it this long without me?_

She doesn't think that thought because she hates that thought and all its implications. Jimmy Novak is dead. This creature wears his face, but he's not her father, and she won't feel any of those things she used to feel when she looked at that face, that face more familiar to her than her own, more familiar to her than the air she takes into her lungs, trying to push back the sudden swell of despair. Of grief. Of rage. It hits so unexpectedly, striking whenever, wherever, so she can never anticipate its attack, never brace for the impact.

He's a puppy, she has come to realize. As big and bad and ruthless, an avenging angel who can't possibly grasp the frailties and importance of human nature, of being human and alive or of loving someone, he is still in a lot of ways … just a puppy.

That doesn't mean she has mercy for him. She never will.

Her toenails are freshly painted purple, small silver ring catching rays of brightness on the middle one, another tiny hoop of silver in her nose, a third shaped like barbells pierced through her belly button. She knows these things draw his eye, bafflement and fascination and some strange consternation flickering across his unschooled face every time he first catches sight of each one, every time she walks into the room, his gaze lingering on all the ways she's marred her perfect human body. Mutilated. Marked. These are his words, the words he won't say, words she sees in his eyes. They bother him, distract him, so she never takes them out and never covers them up, like the tattoo on her wrist, and the other on her hip. She gets a mean kind of satisfaction from any little way she can make him unhappy.

Voice dark, unfriendly, she questions, "What are you doing?"

The angel jolts a little, spinning around with wide eyes to see her there, that gaze going down and up again, absorbing every inch of her in a split second of pervasiveness. "I'm … trying to make you breakfast. Sam says it's the most important meal of the day for creatures like you."

"Creatures like me?"

"Teenagers."

She slides onto a barstool and plants her elbows on the island that stands barrier between the two of them. Drawls rudely, "Don't bother. You cook for shit."

"Yes, well, you'll still need food," he says distractedly, turning from her, eyeing the mess he's made out of his epic failed efforts. Unsurely, "Should we go out and find some?"

"Don't you have demons to chase down?" she retorts, being purposely irritable. She grabs a muffin off the plate of black muffins, the single exception that seems less charred than the rest, and picks it apart, shoving a chunk into her mouth. Two seconds later, she bends over and spits it back out. Scrubs her tongue clean with a napkin. "Rogue angels to hypocritically kill?"

He frowns. "I've been gone three weeks. I just got back. I thought we should—"

"Don't think that," she interrupts, hopping off the stool, rounding the counter to reach up past him into the cabinet behind his head and grab herself a foil packet of Pop-Tarts. "I like you best when you're gone." Then she turns and shuffles back upstairs.

She stays locked in her room, ignores his knocks when he comes up to try to talk to her a little later, flipping impatiently through magazines, surfing the internet on the laptop she stole last Thursday, waiting him out. Waiting for him to go again.

It's late afternoon by the time his phone starts ringing. She's been exasperatedly listening to him roam aimlessly around the house for hours now, not knowing what to do with himself, and a phone call can only mean one thing. It's Dean on the line and he's asking for help. She creeps carefully from her room, down the hall, avoiding every floorboard that squeaks, peeking around the corner down into the L of the staircase. Eavesdropping.

"Yes, of course. I'll be right there." Then, "I know that she blames me for taking her father from her, but I don't understand why she has to be so distressing."

* * *

><p>It's cold outside and lonely in this big old empty house. She'd never admit that, but it is what it is. So she tries to veg out on the couch for as long as she can stand it, stabbing her fork into a pumpkin pie, legs curled under her, surfing fuzzy channels of infomercials and reality TV. When she's so sick of that, so bored out of her mind that she has to get up, must make change, she puts on her shoes, her scarf, her gloves, her hat, her jacket, and goes out.<p>

She trudges around the mall for awhile, stuffing things into her bag, pickpocketing wallets until she has enough cash to pad her pockets. She tries on clothes in a dressing room and uses layers to take what she likes the look of, spending a little extra while braiding pinched strands of neon colors into her blonde and black tresses, silken straw on the surface, midnight beneath, twisting strings of pink and blue and pure white. Sneaks into a theater more to sit in the dark and peruse her loot than to experience a new movie. She flows out with the flood of the crowd then stops at the food court for a snack before heading back out into the storm.

The blizzard has worsened.

Once back at the farmhouse, she scrounges out the boxes of Christmas lights she lifted and drags out the stepstool, stringing them up along the frame of the rooms, beginning in the foyer, draping across the archway, moving into the den. Blue rope lights, white rope lights, a fat red poinsettia here and there, a cheery bell above the front door. It's stupid and useless and later in the night all it will do is depress her, but she smiles while she's working. Socks fuzzy and striped, knit leggings tight on the hip and loose on the calf, sweater jacket slipping off one shoulder and hanging below the knee, her shirt riding up her midriff as she stretches skyward onto her toes with the staple gun. Her daddy would've killed her for a stunt like that, but her daddy's dead. Dead and gone. She doesn't care about holes in the original oak trim of this old farmhouse. She's not gonna be here for long.

She never is.

When she reaches too far and the stepstool begins to waver, she should've gotten down and moved it over, but instead she just reached farther, pressed harder on the gun's lever, struggling against the strength it takes. The stool tips and the gun releases and the girl cries out. But a pair of warm wide hands grip her by the hips before she can crash, bracketing her waist, holding her in place.

Looking down at the imperturbable angel, she steadies her breath and says, "You're back." Then remembering herself, not liking her soft tone, adds archly, "Don't you knock?"

"You could break your neck doing precarious tasks like that."

Ignoring the uneasiness it's difficult to pinpoint as he eases her low, setting the girl back to her feet on the floor and carefully removing his hands, she deadpans, "I'd have been fine. I land on my feet. Like a cat."

"I didn't know you were religious."

"I'm not. It's just the season. Traditions." She shrugs it off, uncomfortable under the clear crystalline blue of his intentful stare, so hard to read now. So fucking foreign. Blue, blue, blue. _These eyes my father gave me_. "I like the colors."

He gazes slowly around the glowing room. "Would you like me to get you a tree?"

"I don't care. Do what you want." But a tree would be nice. She can get one herself. Even if it's not like she can just stuff one under her coat. She'll figure it out. Or not. Who needs a tree? It'd just bring back memories of hanging the ornaments, sitting on Dad's lap, feeling his arms warm and strong around her, helping her hook the frayed gold strands onto the stiff branches, vibrations from his husky laughter thrumming from his chest into her body, warming her blood. It would just fucking hurt. Lights are one thing. She likes the colors. But she doesn't need some stupid Christmas tree delivered by some stupid angel.

Her face tells him that, tells him everything, before she walks out of the room.

* * *

><p>"Claire," he calls her name. It's the first time he's used it in months. That's okay, since she avoids using his name too.<p>

Since he said it first, she answers with an edge, "Castiel."

She's on the floor, legs crossed, paintbrush in her hand, palette of colors beside her hip, stroking deep carnelians into the mural of Starry Night like abstract work she's spent her days swirling across the living room wall. Crescent moon hung in focal point, stars and storm clouds and a black blue sea below, lapping at the drip of rich red blood falling from a wrecked ship and tainting a grey fog. Sketches of various visions plaster every inch practically of her bedroom wall upstairs but this is by far her best work in this house.

It's almost enough to make her grateful for the art supplies she'd found wrapped beneath a glittering ornate Christmas tree that appeared in the corner of the front parlor one random day, set before the bay windows. Not a word, not an inch of scrawled ink on a card, just the supplies. Just the tree. This is how they communicate. This is how they make it work. He's trying his best, but his best is pathetic, and she appreciates being left alone, she appreciates the paints and the brushes and the coals and the acrylics and the canvases, but none of that softens her feelings for the angel that thought of them. None of that lessens the bitterness sharp like jagged glass inside of her at the sight of him. The sound of him, that voice which once meant comfort and safety and love, hollowed out now and gruff, lacking any sentiment, any understanding. Stoic. Flat. More cruel than if he'd slung ugly epithets at the girl.

"Sam suggests you should go to school."

The brush in her hand pauses mid stroke. There's a quick impulse to bite his head off but in the end she's just too mellow. "Does he now?" she retorts, fully wry, fully sarcastic. Lazy.

"Once you turn eighteen, you will want to make a life for yourself. That apparently requires accredited education."

Brush wavering against the wall, tongue curling out to moisten her lips as she inhales with calm contemplation. Bored, disinterested, _dispassionate_. "Sure," she answers at last, because it would probably be better than wandering around this big old empty house like a restless ghost with nothing whatsoever to do. No purpose, no point to anything, only so much trouble she can find to get herself in. "Sure, why not?"

After an awkward stillness, she feels him move, hears the rustle of his trenchcoat, his slacks, crouching down at her shoulder, just a little behind. She's frozen, so he hesitates, but ultimately unfurls one fist to stroke the side of his forefinger down her cheekbones, swiping off a streak of blue paint. She wants to tell him _don't touch me_. She wants him to put his hand back and never take it away. To hold her. She wants to break his nose. She wants a lot of things. A lot of them don't make any sense.

It doesn't matter anyway.

There's nothing he can do that would take this wound away.

But there is something violent that rattles soundlessly in her chest. A brutal devastating kind of restrained intensity. It's in a cage, locked like a box, buried deep. She wraps herself up in the apathy that saved her life six years ago, when an angel took her over, when the angel leveraged her life to steal her father's. When her mother ran off and it was just a ten-year-old on her own in an ugly world with no pity for parentless innocence.

"I'll have to assume an alias," she tells him, perfectly calm, perfectly still, perfectly devoid. "You don't have legal custody of me. I'm still a ward of the state. They'll take me back."

"The Winchesters have much practice in … assuming identities."

"Fine," she says, unfolding her legs, popping to her feet, shoving past where he's crouched without a backwards glance.

The paintbrush clatters to the palette with a splat of colors.

* * *

><p>The angel is sitting on the sofa when she staggers home, falling into the foyer when she gets the door finally open, only her grip on its knob keeping her off the floor. The angel is sitting on the sofa in the dark, just the sickly light of the television casting a glow on his face, on the room, sitting and waiting, his posture stiff with discomfort, his dangerous hands in his lap. The sight of him there, so obviously waiting up for her, makes the girl giggle. Like <em>hysterically<em>. Feet so heavy and uncoordinated even after she manages to painstakingly yank off her heeled Gothic boots, she careens into the dark room and collapses with a noisy breath onto the cushion beside him, harrumphing when she nearly misses her landing.

"You've been drinking."

"A lot," she laughs, slumping further sideways, letting his stiff shoulder prop her upright. "Swallowed some pills too. Wanna see me walk a straight line?" Conspiratorial, her grin wicked, she slurs, "I can't."

"Claire—"

"Oh, no!" she interjects quickly, laughing out, flinging forward off the couch onto her feet, unsteady but keeping moving. Sarcastic and sloppy. "So grim. The frowning angel. Here comes the lecture. But I don't wanna hear it, man. I don't wanna hear your words." At the bookcase, flipping on the stereo, she lets her head fall back and her eyes drift shut, swaying to the music. Her hands graze her body, rucking the shirt a bit up her midriff, one arm going above her head when she slowly twirls, working her way back towards where he sits. Syrupy strumming of an acoustic guitar, quiet foot tapping, reedy trills off a harmonica, and the raspy purring voice of a bluesman seeping from the speakers, his soft Australian falsetto girl lacing hers through the set. Singing _carry on, carry on, carry on, here comes a better day_. As she listens, as she moves to it, Claire lets the high sweep her away. Slurring absently, "Don't wanna hear it."

Standing in front of him when the song ends, transitioning into another, she stills. _Oblivion_, she recognizes. The hand pressed to her stomach falls away. The breath in her lungs leaves her. How appropriate, this track, this soaring dream pop, how heartbreaking. How much it fucking speaks to her. Melodies are dangerous that way. _In the night, you hear me calling. And in your dreams, you see me falling_. Eyes focusing, she feels strange, feels light and free and yet heavy, weighed down with grief and bitterness, a calm simmering kind of self-hatred that burns and burns and burns, pushing her to do the things she does that make no sense. Aching. Longing. Feeling just fine on the surface.

"What are you doing?" he wants to know, completely confused, not quite off-put, when she shrugs out of her jacket and pushes forward, straddling his lap. One knee on either side of him, digging into his hips, her fingers find his shoulders, bunching in the fabric of his grey tee, in the tense muscle of its set. Tangled blonde and black hair spilling around them, she rotates against his body, pressing her weight down into him, pistoning her hips just teasingly. His arms go up, hands splayed in a surrendering rise of long fingers and wide palms, not knowing what to do, where to put them, hesitating on the impulse to shove her off. Thousand questions in his voice, in his furrowed brow, he says her name like, "_Claire_?"

Like she doesn't make sense to him. But that's okay, because she doesn't make sense to her either anymore. She doesn't know who she is or what she's doing, what she _should_ be doing or what she wants to be doing, where she's going to go. It's just … messy. _It's messy being me_, she thinks, and then she has to laugh. A miserable broken sound. Jagged like glass.

She leans in, tries to kiss him, but his neck pulls back, his blue eyes piercing as they stare into her, seeing straight through her. Those blue eyes. It's not fair. It's her father's face and it fucking hurts and it makes her hate him, need him, hate him, want him, hate him, burn for him. It's her father's face but it'll never be her father. She lifts one hand, catches the short dark hair at the back of his head, fingers twisting in the strands, clenching tight. She arches up on knees, spine bowed, and bends down from above, taking his mouth with her own, kissing him in this harsh punishing way. This brutal crush of lips.

When she grinds down on him, she feels the thick shivery friction of his hardness, his body's proof that he's not as inhuman as he acts. She reaches down between their bodies, soft fingers finding what betrays him, a mean smile curving at the edges of her mouth. Undulating on him, licking into him with warm wet strokes of her tongue, his lips falling accidentally apart for her. She presses close, burying her body on his, crushing strongly, as if wanting to open him up and crawl inside, wrap him around herself. Kissing him madly, wetly, warmly, fingers sliding loose from his hair to catch his face, hold his jaw, fingertips to his chin and his lips as she kisses him, consumes him, begging with every caress and tug and shudder for him to do the same. She has so much burning inside her, so much bottled up, bound to explode, to destroy, but she doesn't want to be destructive. She wants to be devoured.

He turns his head, expression shutdown, blue eyes cold, pained behind the stone of them, behind that wavering wall he constructs. His fingers banded around her wrists, she's caught and it's cold and jagged and all those ugly things she's becoming accustomed to. There is no warmth or touch or love or comfort or want in this world for her. She's going about it all the wrong way, but it means the same, and this unbreakable barrier leaving her out in the cold, in the ice, in the dark unwanted wasteland, it reminds her of what she already knew. The wrong thing to want, the wrong thing, but it's all the same.

"What? Angels don't fuck?" she barbs bluntly. She's so high. The words just fall off her lips. She gets a wicked thrill, but it is empty satisfaction. It is the bitter familiarity of rejection, of a need not being met, a man not wanting her. Love, family, hope, desire, father, daughter, lover, friend, orphan, ugly thing, broken thing, lonely thing. "You're allowed to kill indiscriminately but not create life? The most natural thing in the word."

"This is your father's body."

The sharp edges get harder. "No, it's not. You stole it from him. This is your body."

"This is not right."

The girl laughs, a harsh bark of noise, of something rotten dislodged from the tightness in her chest. Hollow, she echoes, "Right." And then, "_Right_?!" Ripping her wrists free of his grasp, she wrenches herself off of him, onto her feet, shoving fiercely at his shoulders when he rises after her. "Don't talk to me about _right_!" she shouts, gritted teeth, cheeks flushed, panting for furious breath. He tries to stand again and again she shoves him back down. Tells him quietly, intensely, "You don't know what right is."

"Claire—"

"_You don't know what right is_!" she shrieks, staggering back as he surges upwards at her, shoving again at him, this time not making him budge. He keeps moving, keeps forging to her, and she keeps backpedalling, shoving against his pursuit, screaming and hitting at him with mad ineffectual fists, tears streaming, marking her face with black rivers. "You don't know! You don't know what it means! You think you're so righteous! God's fucking angels! But you don't know what _right_ means! You kill and you preach and you take and you take and you never fucking _care_! You never _see_ the damage you do! It never matters what you leave behind!"

"Claire, you matter—"

"_Shut up_!" she screams. "Just. Shut. Up." And hits him. And hits him. Shuddering with sobs and wet blind distress, wild hurt and rage, beating at his chest when he wraps an arm around her and holds her to him through her assault.

Castiel and Claire. Aren't they a pair? The angel and the orphan. _The angels will protect you_, her daddy used to say, tucking her in, turning out the light. But all this angel ever did was ruin her life. Kill and be righteous and order around and take, take, take. There is something terribly evocative about him. The fallen heralded Castiel of Heaven. Whether it is their history or just the irksome angel himself, it irritates Claire to no end. Torments her.

And this odd thing they're doing, pretending to be, it's killing her. Can't he see that? It's so close to everything she wishes she didn't want so badly, so close and yet so glaringly _not_ that. Not enough.

She thinks she hates this creature. She's hated a lot of things, a lot of people, since she became what she became, but never this purely, this surely, this kind of sick clarity comfort. _Sick is the new sane_, she heard somewhere. Ain't that the truth. She is sick and miserable and all she wants to do is be somebody else. She wants a do over.

His arms are around her, holding her hard to him, lifting her up when her legs give out, carrying her up the stairs. She's still struggling but the fire has gone. In the bathroom, he sets her down in the corner of the bath and levers on the shower, a waterfall of cold spraying down over her head. When she calms, when she settles, when she's just a shivering miserable mess, tired and barely aware, drenched to the bone, he shuts off the faucet and scoops the girl up, wrapping a towel around her, placing her into bed, curled up on her side, blankets around her, still sopping wet. He turns out the light and closes the door. Leaves her all alone in the dark, where she lives, where she belongs, where she longs for something more.

_You don't know what right is_, she thinks. But whispers dejectedly, "Neither do I."

* * *

><p>In the morning, she wakes with the flu in her lungs and a hangover killing her head, light of a bright yellow day shining in through the windows, making her hurt all over. Tangled in covers, she flips haggardly onto her back, eyes squeezed shut, kicking and kicking until she's free of the heavy damp layers. Groaning in abject misery.<p>

Memories are foggy at first, but just enough forms through the haze to have her groaning for different reasons, kicking herself for being so stupid, so slutty, so disgusting. For being so stereotypically self-destructive. Worst of all, for showing him what she works so hard to hide, for baring her soul. She lays there in suffering, pining for a glass of water and a stern painkiller, remembering what she'd done. Her father's lips, her father's dick. It's a new level of sick. With a grimacing groan, she rolls sideways off the bed, feet smacking the floor, stumbling hurriedly into the bathroom, collapsing over the toilet as her stomach contents upchuck. It's horrible now but she knows she'll feel better once the alcohol stewing in there gets out.

She's just glad he stopped her. But if he thinks she'll give him the pleasure of awkwardness or embarrassment or an apology, God forbid, he's in for a surprise.

* * *

><p>"Get off me, meathead. I'm not some damsel in distress," she snaps, yanking her arm free of Dean's overbearing paw when he tries hauling her out.<p>

"No, you know what you are?" He wrenches her around, bruising grip back around her arm before she can get away, pointing a finger in her face. "You're the distressing damsel."

"Screw you," she curses, struggling to pull loose as they hit the pavement where his Impala waits idling at the curb under a busted streetlamp. She contemplates kicking him in the shin but thinks that'd just piss him off more and wouldn't really get her an escape.

"I am so sick of your teen rebellion crap," he growls, shoving her up against the car's metal as she glares. "You almost got yourself killed."

"He wasn't going to hurt me. We were just hanging out."

"He was a _vampire_!" Dean bursts out, exasperation and irritation making him harsh.

"Yeah, so?" she retorts, flat and unimpressed, purposely baiting his anger. Shoulders shrug, blue eyes narrowed, expression just as unhappy as his. "He was cute. And I had a stake."

Looking to the concerned Sam who watches on, the elder Winchester exclaims, "Oh! Well, she had a stake, Sam. See? I told you we were wasting our time. Lolita had a stake."

"Bite me," she drawls, trying to shove past him with a roll of her eyes. He snatches her back rougher than he would've if she hadn't. She yells archly, "Get off already!"

"Dean," the angel's low commanding voice reverberates, making them turn together to find him striding from the ravaged building. "Do not touch her."

"Like I'd want to."

She shoots him one last mutinous glare as he releases his grasp on her with a huffy thrust. Straightens her shirt and shoulders past him. "Nobody asked any of you to come find me."

* * *

><p>The girl is going stir-crazy in this big old farmhouse by herself. She goes to school, hangs out with casual friends, brings boys home on occasion, but she's still not sated. Bored. Unsettled. Restless. She paints and she sketches and she does her schoolwork and she drinks and smokes and hooks up and waits, waits, waits for something to happen, something to matter. She isn't sure what she's waiting for, looking for, what's missing. She's just looking out for the other shoe that's bound to drop soon. It already should've by now really. It makes her uneasy.<p>

Walks into the garage when the pent up energy, turmoil, frustration builds to be too much. Starts punching and kicking to relieve the itch. Half an hour later, she's hammering the leather heavy bag like it's crossed her. She's breathing sharp and flushed, slick with sweat, heart racing from the exertion, a good kind of burn in her limbs. The skin over her knuckles splits open and smears a little blood on the black.

She doesn't know why, but she falters off, finding herself crying, catching the bag when it swings back at her, stilling its jerks, resting her sweaty forehead against it as she pants and sobs with shuddering wracks of motion more than sound. Which is of course when he has to appear in the doorway. He just fucking has to, because his timing sucks.

"You're crying."

_No shit, Sherlock_, comes to mind, but it's so trite, so she says tiredly, "I know that, brainiac."

"Why?"

"Why not?" she throws back. Lets go of the bag and pushes off, breathing in with resolve, stamping down the abrupt paroxysm. The set of her shoulders is stiff with deep discomfort and innate defensiveness, her fists barely furled and her jabs loose as she continues.

"I don't understand."

Claire pauses, pushes out a frustrated breath, rubbing the back of her fist at the wetness of her blotched face, scrubbing sticky wisps of blonde hair away. "Of course you don't," she says, starting in on the bag again. Thin reedy voice strengthening with guttural disdain. Cynicism and hostility riding raspy. "What's not to cry about? The world is shit."

He's silent for a long time, standing there unmoved, watching her pound out her feelings. Finally, falteringly, he asks the girl, "How do I make it stop?" Her punch glances off the bag and her body stutters into stillness. And then, "The crying."

Gruffly, stiltedly, Claire answers, "Mind your own business." She turns around on her heels, walks over, and shuts the door in the angel's face.

* * *

><p>Breakfast is an awkward thing when he's here with her. Some days, she uses silence as a weapon to punish him, make him squirm in his seat, his puppyish promptings ignored. But if the strange hollowed alien quality is upon him in his voice, in the blue stare he watches her with, sometimes she'll respond. The inhuman thing is a creature she can handle, something she's not afraid of, not afraid of what it'll make her wish for.<p>

"It's nice that you wanna assuage your guilt and play house for awhile, Clarence Odbody, but you can't be my father," she tells him one day, heavy on the dryness.

His fork drops to the plate with a clink, still in his grasp, eyes downcast. "Don't call me that."

She's confused. Looks up at him in surprise, caught off guard, because this is her reaction, not his. "What? Clarence? It's just a nickname. I was insulting you."

"Don't call me that," is all he'll say.

The girl sighs, rolls her eyes, mutters like it doesn't matter, "Whatever." But when she slams the door on her way out, he knows that for some reason it does.

* * *

><p>She's knocked to the ground, clutching her cheek, copper on her tongue, berating herself for being so stupid. She knew the guy was bad news when he picked her up in the bar because she could see the ugly gleam in his eyes, but she was buzzed and wallowing in self-pity, so she let him take her along. And now she's regretting it.<p>

"Little bitch. What'd you do that for?"

"You were too rough," she retorts, feeling nasty satisfaction at the way he grips himself in aggrieved injury, her teeth bloody when she grins, when she huskily laughs.

He aims a kick at her stomach as she crawls backward, dragging herself across the floor until her back hits the bed's edge, spitting red to the hardwood, glaring up at him, blue eyes flashing. Before his boot can connect, the rustle of a beige trenchcoat and strong supernatural fingers get in the way. He lifts the brute up by the throat off his feet. Throws him. Crashing to the wall, cracking the plaster, he lands in a limp tangle of limbs, blacked out.

Looking down at the girl huddled there, still somehow defiant, Castiel offers his hand to help her up. Just says, "You've a tendency to attract trouble."

"Bite me," she mutters rudely, roughly, not about to admit her relief, not about to examine the ramifications of the obvious. That he wasn't following her. That he answered her prayer. Once, finally, way too late, yet still saving some piece of her. He never listened before, but he's listening now. She feels more resentful than she had before because of that, not grateful, just a little raw ironic.

"Claire," he says her name. "Are you alright?"

Shoving aside his reaching fingers, she thrusts herself up, pushes past him out of the room, swiping the blood from her injured lip. Rumbling breathily, begrudgingly, "Just fine."

* * *

><p>He sits down beside where she's curled up in a corner of the couch, handing over a soft gel ice pack to press gingerly to her bruised jaw, their fingers brushing on the exchange, the wince on her face at its touch making his mouth tighten. It softens the harsh edges inside her, if only for just a second, only just slightly. The broken glass shattered into small enough embers to be muffled for a fleeting moment with her bruised licking wounds.<p>

"You ever love anybody in your whole immortal life?" she wonders softly. In the quiet dark, in the intimacy of their closeness, she feels safe enough to risk speaking her mind. "Thousands and thousands of years. Ever anybody? Ever once?"

"I love Dean Winchester."

"Not like that. Not like brothers. I mean love. Honest to God love. Like a mate. Like one half of an eternal pair. Someone you can't breathe without. Someone you breathe in."

He's rigid, uncertain, somber. "No. Angels don't … mate."

She's looking at him, head tipped to rest on the back of the couch, on her arm folded there, his gaze on his hands on his lap. "Did you ever want that? With anyone?"

"There was one," he confesses after a long silent beat. "I think it was love. I miss her, if that is the kind of emotion you mean."

"What happened?"

"She was a demon. She … died."

"Jesus," she breathes, chest heaving once with a shaky half laugh. "That's rich." She almost doesn't believe him, but she recognizes banked loss in his eyes, in the way he won't look at her, that way he's watching his own hands on his own thighs unmoved. It's like the yawning chasm inside of her, like that soundless sucking black hole. Tongue licking out to wet her chapped lips, Claire lets her lashes fall, wistful curve to her mouth as she murmurs drolly, "Once upon a time, an angel and a demon fell in love. And then the floods swelled forth."

* * *

><p>"Take my hand," the angel says suddenly one morning.<p>

It's sunlight and summer and Claire is sitting cross-legged in the green grass of the yard, under the sweep of an ancient oak tree, charcoal smudging her fingers dark as she sketches an interpretation of the scenery. He appears out of nowhere, casting a shadow over the girl's form as he cuts across the sun's path, towering above her. Flipping her hair aside, she tips the shades on her nose down below her eyes and squints up at him, neck craning.

"Why?" she asks suspiciously, just on rote.

Castiel furls his fingers, unfurls, waits expectantly. Patiently. Until finally the girl sighs and sets down her sketchpad. She reaches up and clasps his hand, lets him haul her onto her feet, body brushing his coat. He warns, "This will be unpleasant."

But she gets no time to brace herself before the invisible sensation of massive wide wings unfurling catches her in a rippling whiplash, a rush of air and displacement dizzying her head, stealing her breath. The yard around them splices, fades away, coalescing into a strange place. In the blink of an eye, she finds herself standing on the edge at the top of a crumbling palazzo. A coliseum structure overlooking an ancient world. Burnt sienna light bathing an ageless city, rolling hills, deep valleys, blue skies. Warmth kisses her skin even as her stomach flips, fingers at her elbow steadying the girl when she falters, leaning against his solid chest to catch her breath and push through the nausea. And then she opens her eyes and gazes in wonder at the view, feet so near the precipice of a great height, awe at where she is.

It's breathtaking. It's unbelievable. It's freaking awesome.

"This is your birthday," he informs her, like she'd forgotten, vibrations from his gravel voice rising from his chest to her cheek, making her smile.

Dazedly, she replies, "Yeah. It is."

"I thought you might like—"

He never finishes his thought. He doesn't have to. His grip on her arms firms but he doesn't keep her from leaning forward over the edge, breathing in the rush of crazy high oxygen, of the thrill of this height. Barcelona on her birthday. It's exactly enough to make her blue eyes shine, wetness slipping down her face, lips stretching brightly. Husky laughter reverberates out of her. She falls back against him in happiness. In delighted disbelief.

* * *

><p>Crying out. Body shuddering with stifled sobs. <em>Prayed for you<em>, runs through her mind now, over and over._ I prayed for you. Every night, I prayed for you. And you never came._ Wrenched at the gut from it, the unfairness, the hope, the despair, she shudders and cries, "Stay with me. _Please_. Please stay. I don't want you to leave. Everyone leaves me."

He lays a hand over hers, fingers interlocking, squeezing strongly. When she sinks down to the mattress, curling onto her side like a wounded animal, he moves hesitantly beside the girl, molding his body to her smaller frame, cradling her from behind, holding her safe.

These are the rare moments in the dead of night, drunk and uninhibited, briefly unguarded, where she lets herself be small and vulnerable, be honest, and feel everything she pushes away during the day. They don't talk about these moments in the light of morning because she hates her weakness, because he wouldn't know what to say, because they're the exceptions.

* * *

><p>She knows how to throw a punch, but she wants to learn to fight. Really fight. Not to hunt, but to be able to take care of herself, seriously, for real, badass style. She doesn't tell him this, yet he seems to know, because he says, "Dean may teach you, if you ask nicely."<p>

* * *

><p>It's graduation day and the angel is nowhere to be found. Busy with the Winchesters, with war, who knows. She smiles and laughs and jokes with her friends and pretends to not even notice his absence. What's it to her anyway? He's never around when she really needs him, needs <em>someone<em>, because human things aren't important to him. He'll show up if her life is in immediate mortal danger, but he doesn't get the concept of loneliness. Or quiet pride and the annoying impulse of seeking his approval. She wants to kick herself for it, but it tends to happen more and more often lately. Yearning for his validation, for his attention, for his touch. _Human_. For humanness. His company. Tries but can't quite shrug it off when she's left wanting.

But once in awhile, she has to stop and look around, because she could swear she feels blue eyes on her from somewhere. Blue eyes watching from behind, from above, watching her close. He doesn't show up for the day, but by the end of it, she knows he's there.

Leaves her a postcard of Barcelona on the kitchen table when she comes home.


End file.
